Possibility of maiden flight to Red planet Mars after 2035

Moscow: The possibility of the maiden flight to Mars is only after 2035 as an interplanetary spaceship for a flight to the red planet will be created not before 2025, said Russian space agency Roscosmos chief Anatoly Perminov on Wednesday.

“The possibility of a flight to Mars needs to be combined with the construction of a spaceship having a new nuclear power propulsion unit, which will make it possible to reach the planet in a month,” Perminov said in Russia's upper house of Parliament.

He said the propulsion unit, which serves the purpose of changing the velocity of a spacecraft in the space, is to be built by 2019.

As part of the state nuclear corporation Rosatom's innovation development programme in 2010-2018 on the joint project with Roscosmos to create a nuclear power unit-based transport module for the future spacecraft, some 7.2 billion rubles ($256 mn) are to be allocated.

Russia, as well as the US, have been developing technology to produce nuclear-powered spacecraft for decades.